Living in the Boston area, we can get a little blasé about the American colonial history that surrounds us. You drive through the first battlefields of the Revolutionary War in Concord to get to a doctor’s appointment and walk past Paul Revere’s house in Boston’s North End to get cannoli. I’m sure people in California get a little blasé about the historic mission buildings and people in Philly don’t get chills every time they see a great cheesesteak stand. One of our local historic sites, Longfellow’s Wayside Inn, is a lovely place to take a walk and decompress. It’s also a great place to eat. In Longfellow’s Wayside Inn Cookbook (1983), we found exactly what you need for a good July 4th celebration, a couple of recipes for Independence Day.
There are lots of traditional recipes in the book, but two seemed to be the just right recipes for Independence Day. First is cake, because what is a holiday without cake? Behold an unusual and distinctly summery confection, a Rose Geranium Poundcake.
Rose geranium leaves have a distinctive rose smell that is captured for this recipe by burrowing leaves in confectioner’s sugar for a few days, allowing the essential oils seep out and flavor the sugar. There are many types of geraniums, we’ll leave it to the garden sites to explain those. The ones most of us are familiar with are zonal and ivy geraniums. Rose geraniums are not as showy, but heavens do they smell heavenly.
Geranium scented poundcake on a June or July day? Absolutely sign me up. Even though you need to plan a few days ahead to infuse the scent into the powdered sugar, it’s worth the effort.
But man cannot live by cake alone. One must also have punch. And what recipe for Independence Day could be more appropriate than one for a punch made with dark beer and rum, two spirits that were critical to fueling the Sons of Liberty back in the day. (We’re talking to you, Sam Adams.)
This recipe for Meeting House Punch was served at the steeple raising of the Old South Meeting House on Beacon Hill in 1789. It has been scaled, the original called for 25 gallons of rum. Whether or not this is a true history or an apocryphal tale matters not, it’s real enough for us. Though it is shown served with ice cubes, we have our doubts it was chilled back then. Although for an occasion like that, they might have raided the ice house.
The Wayside Inn bar serves Meeting House Punch, but if you’re not in the vicinity of Sudbury, MA, you can make it yourself. We were not a math major, but this looks like it could be easily scaled down if you don’t need 32 servings.
Fear not if you don’t have a punch bowl. You can get one for short money at almost any thrift store. In fact, you could probably get six or seven. But you could also use a stock pot or speckled enamelware pot. We’re not mixologists and we don’t know what being in metal would do to the punch, but no one who drank it originally is around to tell you it tastes funny, so let convenience rule the day.
Enjoy this Independence Day holiday and all the fireworks and parades that come with it. Give a thought to the colonial era men and women who risked so much to birth this country, some of whom are long forgotten except for barely legible stones in very old cemeteries. Raise a toast to them and to the USA on her birthday.
